Posted by Paleface on February 18, 2024 at 17:15:53 EST in reply to Got a NGP cart dumper and I'm dumpin' my carts! from Paleface.
Emulation fun: Dokodemo Mahjong Color running only in b&w in older emulators, etc! (inside)
Have been able to apply the translation patches for Biomotor Unitron 2 (Kikou Seiki Unitron), Card Fighters Clash 2, and Rockman Battle & Fighters. : )
Dokodemo Mahjong Color only runs in b&w in the older emulators, ie NeoPop and even Mednafen--which appears to have cloned NeoPop's emulation, ancient bugs and all. In a fancy new emulator such as ares, DMC does run in color; not sure about MAME, which I guess added NGPC emulation some time back, and shows off color screenshots of DMC--but I couldn't seem to work out how to run my non-canonical dumped ROMs from the MAME command line; and I'm not sure if MAME requires NGPC BIOS files, but ares definitely does (it emulates the system's start-up screens, which the older emulators don't do); I don't think I have a non-piratical way to get the BIOS from my actual NGPCs, so that's out.
After also having tried and mostly failed with all the other supposed Windows NGPC emus, I'm down to NeoPop/Mednafen. ; D NeoPop has a GUI, so it's convenient for going through loads of ROMs at once; Mednafen is command-line only, so it's a lot slower for that. NeoPop's input mapping is spotty--I got it working on my DS4, but had to resort to a Frankensteining of DS4Windows and Joy2Key, and trial and error with some of the button IDs, which don't seem to match their Windows IDs.
The remaining problem with NeoPop so far is that its full screen mode doesn't work--invisible, then crashes; at biggest I can run NeoPop at 4x windowed, which is still kinda small on a 1080p screen. Mednafen on the other hand runs full-screen OpenGL.
Back on the plus side, NeoPop can force games into b&w NGP mode, which Mednafen can't do--so with NeoPop you can play the hidden b&w tree-chopping game "Yosaku" in KOF: Battle de Paradise, for instance. So I'll keep NeoPop for that and checking through lots of ROMs quickly.
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